Sleeping Arrangements
by apriiil
Summary: Because for whatever reason, Bickslow and Lucy have difficulty sleeping in the same bed, as weird as it sounds. One-shot. [HWHL]


**Thought it was about time for another addition to the HWHL universe... and I'm still procrastinating.**

 **You guys already know Hiro Mashima owns Fairy Tail, so I'm really going to stop saying this. Again.**

* * *

Bickslow would always find himself waking up in one of two ways. One, being tangled up with Lucy in a mess of limbs, or two, on the floor. Even though the former was his more preferred method, the latter was more common.

Much more common.

Even though they'd been together for more than a year, they'd only actually lived together – officially – for less than a month. For the first eighteen months of their relationship, they hadn't actually had that many chances to spend their nights together, lest they cause suspicion. But now that they were officially re-married and officially living in the same residence, they'd come across a rather big problem.

They just weren't very good at sleeping together.

Well, they were good at _sleeping_ together. Hell, he knocked her up (accidentally), so they were good at that. Very good at that, actually. It was just the actual sleeping part they couldn't do – you know, dead to the word for approximately eight or so hours every night. And it was a little weird that sleeping together in the same bed every night would cause a problem.

But it wasn't like it was intentional. If they weren't migrating towards each other (assuming they didn't fall asleep cuddled up and curled up together) to entangle themselves in their sleep, Lucy was slowly and unconsciously moving towards Bickslow's side of the bed, and eventually, he'd get pushed right to the edge and eventually fall off.

And Lucy would stay asleep, most of the time. She'd woken up the first few times Bickslow had landed on the soft rug above the hardwood floors with a surprisingly loud thud and a groan, and she'd apologise profusely, but after a bit, she just slept through it.

So when Bickslow once again landed on the floor after being pushed to the edge of the mattress after Lucy migrated towards him in her sleep, Bickslow slowly pushed himself up with a groan. He reached to pick up the small alarm clock on the nightstand and when he saw the time, he had to stop himself from groaning again. The baby wasn't born (yet), so he wasn't supposed to be awake at three o'clock in the goddamn morning. He wasn't supposed to be awake until three o'clock in the goddamn afternoon.

Well, that's what time he _liked_ to wake up, but when he has a wife that likes to get up at the devil's hour (otherwise known as anytime before noon to Bickslow, and Lucy liked to get up around 7AM), Bickslow had had to forfeit his sleep-ins.

Ah, the things you do for love.

Slowly, Bickslow made his way around to Lucy's side of the bed and pulled the covers back to climb onto the now empty side, since once again, Lucy had decided that his side of the bed was hers.

It was an unconscious decision, of course.

His arm snaked around Lucy to wrap around her stomach as he sidled up behind her and pulled her against his chest gently. As Bickslow made himself comfortable on _her_ pillow, he nestled his face against the back of her neck and breathed in her scent. How she always managed to smell like strawberries with a hint of vanilla was beyond him, but he still loved it.

"You've gotta stop doing that," he murmured, knowing she was somewhat awake. Well, he hoped. Kinda.

But she was actually somewhat awake. So as she curled up in his arms and against his chest, pulling the blanket up to her chin again, she slurred in her mostly asleep state, "Mmhmm, later, baby. Sleep time." She wasn't actually sure what he'd said, just that he'd said something. But she couldn't ignore the guy, so instead, she'd just say something that would hopefully work as a response.

And Bickslow didn't really care either way because he was already well on his way to falling asleep again and waking up at a somewhat reasonable time.

* * *

"Alright, we've gotta come up with a solution for you literally pushing me out of bed in the middle of the night," he mumbled, sitting down at the breakfast bar next to Lucy as he took a bite of his toast.

"You know I don't mean to do it."

"I know, baby, but it kinda hurts."

Lucy sighed as she swivelled on her stool and put her glass of juice down and tucked her hair behind her ears. "So what do you suppose we do?" she asked. "Wall of pillows in the middle of the bed, maybe?"

"Fuck no," he scoffed as he reached out for an apple in the fruit bowl just to the side of him. There was no way he was going to be separated from his wife by goddamn pillows.

"Then what do you suggest?"

Bickslow's brows knit together as he took a bite from the apple, his eyes looking towards the ceiling as he ran over every possible solution his brain could come up with – and really, it wasn't many and they weren't exactly that creative since it was still the hour of the devil, being that it was just past 8AM.

Pushing the bed up to the wall would be stupid, because if anything, he'd probably just end up pushed against the wall himself and that was going to be uncomfortable. Besides, if he got up first, he was going to have to climb over Lucy and that was probably going to cause more problems. They couldn't swap sides of the bed, because either way, Lucy would migrate towards whatever side he was on.

But…they could get a bigger bed. If they got a bigger bed, it would take Lucy longer to push him off – unconsciously. Hell, a bigger bed would be a brilliant idea even if they didn't have a problem with their sleeping arrangements. A bigger bed would mean more room to cuddle…and do other things. Other things that could possibly lead to Lucy getting pregnant. You know, if she wasn't already.

Grinning, he turned his focus back to Lucy who was looking back at him anxiously, awaiting his solution to most likely shoot it down. "Bigger bed," he said simply.

"A bigger bed?" she asked a little sceptically, not yet seeing how it would help.

"We'd have more room, which means your own side would be bigger—"

"My side is the entire bed either way and you know it," she interrupted, giggling slightly.

"-and it would be harder for you to push me off," he finished, only leaning across the gap between their chairs to steal a quick kiss and silence her laughing. "But you do have a point."

"Of course I have a point, but still, is a bigger bed really going to solve anything?" Lucy stood up from her own stool with a small smile and an innocent (sort of) face, and lifted herself enough to sit on Bickslow's lap with her back against the counter and her arms wrapped around his neck. "I mean; I can't really help it if I'm wanting to get closer to my husband, even in my sleep…"

Bickslow's grin grew wider as he slowly wound his arms around her and clasped his hands at her side of her hip, his forearm resting against her ever-growing belly. Shrugging slightly, he said quietly, "Who knows? It might not solve anything and I'll still end up on the floor half the time, but…a bigger bed means a bigger mattress and that means there's more room to play…" He knew the look Lucy was giving him; he knew that smile and he knew what it meant.

It was a look Bickslow liked. A lot.

"Well, that's always nice…"

"It's very nice," he murmured. "But…I've already decided; we're getting a bigger bed regardless."

"I figured as much."

"Good," and swiftly, he moved one arm to rest under her knees and stood up, letting his tongue loll from his mouth at the squeal of surprise it warranted. "Now, how about we go get ready to head to the shopping district and go look at some new bedframes?"

Lucy pursed her lips in thought, though her eyes told a different story. So looping her arms around Bickslow's neck tighter, she looked up at him with those same chocolate eyes and the most innocent looking smile she could muster, and said softly, "That sounds good, but…I'm thinking a shower is in order first."

"A shower can be arranged."

So as Bickslow slowly walked back down the hall – slowly, just because even his pace was going to be teasing his lovely wife – he had a smirk that never left his face. Inwardly, he was thanking every single god that existed for pregnancy hormones.

Well, the good ones, anyway.

* * *

Lucy sighed as she stared at the rows of bed frames, all in different sizes, styles, and colours. They'd already spent so much time furniture shopping, just because Lucy's furniture wasn't really fitting with how she wanted to decorate the new apartment, and there was no way in hell that Bickslow's _fuck pad_ furniture was being kept. Well, most of it. The only things they ended up keeping were his bed (because honestly, the mattress was really damn comfortable and it was bigger than Lucy's old bed, which now belonged to Natsu), his books, and the barstools. Lucy only really kept her own desk, vanity, and her own books, and the rest of their furniture that they wouldn't be taking either got donated or sold.

She thought they'd finished with all of the shopping, but here they were again in Magnolia's largest furniture store and staring at bed frames. And honestly, Lucy didn't think it would be so goddamn hard.

But it was.

"Does it really matter what colour it is?" Bickslow whined as he collapsed back onto a nearby mattress and found him pleasantly surprised when it was a water bed. He was like a child on Christmas morning when he scrambled to his knees to bounce on it slightly, his tongue hanging from his mouth in his giddiness. "Oh, we should so get a water bed!"

"Why?" she asked, coming to stand by the foot of that particular bed and her brow arched in annoyance. Her good mood had instantly dissipated as soon as she'd walked into the furniture store, just because she knew it was going to be a long day of deciding on the right bed frame, mattress, and then new sheets and quilt covers.

"Think of all the fun we could have with this, baby."

Lucy huffed a laugh as she rolled her eyes, folding her arms as she turned to go look at the bed frames that would somewhat match the rest of the furniture in their bedroom. "Not a chance."

"Aw, you're no fun," he complained, scrambling up to chase after Lucy. Hell, he should have expected her to shoot down the idea, but he still had to try. After all, if Bickslow managed to catch her when she was in a really good mood (and honestly, sometimes, it was hard to tell with her emotions being all out of wack), she'd occasionally let him do something really stupid. If, you know, he actually asked her permission, and more often than not, he didn't, and it usually ended with Lucy getting mad at him for a few days, or until he managed to do something extravagant, and honestly, that had been incredibly hard to pull off considering they'd been dating in secret for an incredibly long time.

But he'd learned his lesson.

He wasn't going to intentionally do anything to piss her off. Especially not for the next five or so months. So that meant no water beds. Apparently.

"What do you think of the oak one?" Lucy asked, briefly glancing up when she saw Bickslow come to stand beside her, his arms folded across his chest. He looked towards the bed frames, and as his mouth twisted into a scowl, Lucy narrowed her eyes at him. Bickslow honestly didn't know which one she was actually referring to, and Lucy could realise this, so with a sigh, she walked up and pointed towards the frame she meant. "This one."

"Oh. Yeah, no."

"What about the white one?"

"No."

"Walnut?"

"Whatever."

Lucy sighed, pointing to the next one in the row. "This one?"

"I don't particularly care which one, to be honest."

"Alright then…" she said quietly, turning and slowly walking along the next row until she came across a nearly black one – simple design, modern enough with the simple headboard and footboard with the corners of each slightly raised with a four-post motif, and the colour was close enough to the rest of the furniture in the bedroom. "This one?" she asked.

Bickslow shrugged, coming to a stop just behind her as he looked down at the frame in question. Suited their room and it was pretty similar to what their current bedframe looked like, just in a king size, apparently. "This one works."

Lucy nodded. "Right, so now we've decided on a frame…now we need to decide on a mattress." And as Lucy went off to the mattress part of the store again, Bickslow dropped his head in defeat and sighed as quietly as possible. It had taken them nearly an hour just to decide on the frame, and Bickslow knew he hadn't been making it easy for Lucy by saying 'I don't know' or 'whatever' or just a flat out 'no.' But really, he just didn't care all that much. The only reason even half of the furniture matched in their apartment was because Lucy had gotten her way when buying all of that, too.

He just didn't care.

But he had to indulge his wife and at least pretend to care, even though Lucy really knew he wasn't interested. But hey, she had to admit it was a little entertaining to see him fidget as he tried hard not to mess around with things and annoy people as they walked around the store. She'd already heard him tell the babies to behave numerous times that morning as they tried to go off and do their own thing, which just happened to be cause chaos.

So as they stood in the linen isle later that morning – actually, Bickslow wasn't even sure if it was morning anymore. Hell, he wasn't even sure if it was the same day he was that goddamn tired and bored – having finally come to an agreement on the mattress, they found themselves deciding on what was so far the hardest thing to agree on.

The colour of the sheets.

"I'm telling you, I'm not sleeping in a bed with hot pink sheets."

"It's not even _hot pink_ ," Lucy said irately as she reached for another set of sheets from the shelf. "This, is hot pink," she gestured to the ones she'd just picked up. "These other ones are _rose_ pink."

Bickslow rolled his eyes. "I'm not sleeping in a bed with _pink_ sheets."

"What's wrong with pink?"

"It's pink."

"And that's a reason to hate a colour? Just _because_ it's a certain colour?" she scoffed, an eyebrow arched in amusement.

He shrugged. "Yeah, it is."

"You're a weird one," Lucy laughed, moving away from the various shades of pink sheets in the isle.

With a grin, Bickslow caught up to her quickly and wrapped his arms around her from behind and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek as she giggled. "Yeah, but I'm your weird one," he murmured. Hell, he was her weird one forever and always, and that was something he was quite happy with.

Quite happy with indeed.

So they went through basically every single colour of the goddamn rainbow. Neither wanted white, because it was boring. Lucy didn't want black because it was too dark. Bickslow didn't want pink, and Lucy didn't want green. And they went through every single shade.

Every. Single. Shade.

Of every single colour.

There were three isles of just sheet colours alone, and by that point of their shopping trip, Bickslow had had to send his babies home just because they were getting bored. Hell, they were souls and they were bored. That was saying something. But, he'd had to promise cuddle time with Lucy just so they'd go back to the apartment without leaving a path of destruction in their wake.

Honestly, the babies really were like actual children sometimes, and the fact he had to sacrifice his own cuddle time with his own wife just to keep them happy was a little frustrating.

No, not a little.

It was really fucking frustrating.

But he loved the little guys, and so did Lucy. Besides, now that he was living with Lucy, he got a lot more cuddle time. Hell, he was almost equal with the babies and Plue – Bickslow coming out with the least still, but he was closer. He'd resigned to the fact that his own souls were going to get more cuddle time from his wife than he was for the rest of his life.

"What about purple?" Bickslow asked, folding his arms across his chest as he stared up at the wall of various shades of purple. He liked purple. A lot. Surely they'd be able to agree on a shade of purple, right?

Who doesn't like purple?

"I don't know…" she mumbled, her mouth twisting in thought as she looked over the shades.

"Oh, come on. This is literally the last colour. It has to be purple."

"But…I don't know. I mean, it's a nice colour, but…ugh, I just don't know. I don't really like the idea of purple sheets all that much."

Bickslow was gobsmacked. In all the time they'd been together, he'd never expected her to not like his favourite colour, because they'd never really talked about colours, either.

It was game-changing. He was sure that Lucy was the one, but…she didn't like his favourite colour. Maybe he'd made a grave mistake?

 _No, no, no. It's just a colour_ , he told himself. He was being dramatic because he was bored and he, well…he had a flair for the dramatic. Always. Lucy was the one. It wasn't game-changing.

It was just a colour.

But damn it, how could she not like purple? Who doesn't like purple?!

Oh, right; his wife.

"Are you trying to tell me you don't like the colour purple?" he asked carefully, his eyes narrowing under his visor.

She shrugged. "Well, I mean…it's not that I _don't_ like it, I just…wait, why are you looking at me like that?" Even though he had his visor on (like always), Lucy could still tell that he was looking at her suspiciously, and she didn't entirely know why.

"Because it doesn't make sense. I mean, purple is literally your two favourite colours mixed—"

"Blue and _red_ make purple, not blue and _pink_ ," she interjected, narrowing her own eyes and folding her own arms as she turned to face him completely, leaving the wall of purple sheets and putting it to the back of her mind. She couldn't believe it was all over a damn colour.

"Blue and pink make a light purple," he quipped. "Therefore, still purple."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Whatever, I still don't really know if I want purple sheets."

"Well, we're having purple sheets," he said firmly.

"Alright then," she shrugged.

He took a step back, his face a mask of confusion. "Huh? What? No arguing? Just like that?" _What…? What the hell is happening?_

"Just like that."

"What are you playing at, Cosplayer?" he asked with caution. Bickslow was certain he was walking into a trap. She doesn't give up that easily. Ever.

"Nothing," she smiled, stepping forward to rest her hands on his sides under his cloak and against the pinstriped fabric of his pullover. "You want purple sheets, so we'll have purple sheets." Lucy stood on her tiptoes to quickly kiss his lips as he remained slightly confused, and really, she couldn't help but find it amusing just how quickly his moods could change. Sometimes, she thought he was worse than she was, and she was the one who was pregnant. "Besides, I pretty much chose all of the furniture in the house, so I think you deserve to get the colour sheets you want, don't you think?"

His mouth twisted into a grin. "I suppose."

"So, while you're choosing the sheets, I'll be going and finding a quilt cover that will match purple sheets, okay?" she smiled brightly once again as she pulled away, Bickslow already turning to look back up at the multiple shades of purple that lined the walls.

It was only as she exited the last sheets isle and started to head towards the isles with the quilt covers that she realised they'd need to get a new quilt too, and hell, that was going to be another tough decision.

* * *

It was a Friday. The bedframe and the mattress had finally been delivered that morning after nearly a week, but Lucy wasn't actually going to do anything about them. She didn't particularly feel like putting the bedframe together with the help of her spirits (even though Virgo or Loke would have gladly put it together for her, making sure Lucy herself didn't have to lift a finger), and she couldn't really be bothered moving the now old bed to the guest room/spare room/room where they kept the boxes they had yet to unpack, even though her trusty spirits would be more than happy to do it should she call them out.

But she just didn't feel like it.

She'd been having a pretty terrible day so far, with her back aching and being almost too exhausted to do anything, and to make things worse, her dreaded morning sickness had decided to rear its ugly head again that week. Hell, she thought she was over that, but nope, apparently not.

Lucy hadn't gone into the guild that day, seeing as her team had left for a job the day before, and Bickslow and his team had left a few days earlier. Levy had joined Gajeel on a job with Jet and Droy, and even the Strauss siblings had taken a job, leaving Cana in charge of the bar with Kinana. Yeah, it probably wasn't the wisest decision, but Lucy was going to stay out of that one.

But it was nearing the evening, and Lucy's day of doing almost absolutely nothing, bar reading, working on her book for a while, napping, and cleaning, was quickly coming to a close and she was finding herself bored. She wasn't bored very often.

So slowly, she pulled herself out of bed (where she'd been most of the day), and marked her page in the book of the week before sluggishly heading towards the en suite bathroom where Lucy had decided a nice, long bubble bath awaited her before she had to get dinner organised.

Lucy loved her bubble baths a lot, especially when it gave her aching muscles a relief. The warm water was a saviour to her back, really. Lucy had made it her lifelong mission to make Bickslow enjoy bubble baths, but…it was exactly that: a lifelong mission. Hell, she'd probably die before Bickslow started to like them, even a little bit. The only reason he'd put up with the ones she'd forced upon him was because she was in there too.

But one day, she was going to get Bickslow to enjoy bubble baths on his own. It was her only goal in life.

Well, apart from getting a book published and raise a kid that actually turns out okay. Honestly, Lucy didn't know which one was more likely to happen out of all of them.

So when Lucy stood in the middle of her kitchen not too long after, finishing up the dishes from her own dinner, she found herself staring at the living room on the opposite side of the room. She just stared at it; the two lounges and the armchair, the coffee table, and then the two shelves on either side of the fireplace that were filled with the books and knick-knacks they couldn't fit on the other shelves on the opposite side of the room near her desk.

She didn't really know why she was staring at it so intently, but when a brilliant idea crossed her mind, her lips turned up into a wide grin. All she had to do was put her new plan into motion and wait for Bickslow to get home.

* * *

"Lucy, I'm back," Bickslow called, pushing the door to their apartment open and pulling his hood and visor off with one hand. When he looked towards the lounge area, since it was the only source of light in the entire room, his brow arched and he let his tongue loll from his mouth. "What on Earthland have you done?" he asked, dropping his visor to the small table beside the door with his keys before making his way towards the lounges themselves.

Lucy's head popped out from between the sheets with a wide grin. "I made a fort, obviously." And she had. She'd turned their living room into a sheet fort, and inside that sheet fort was their new mattress, complete with the dark purple sheets Bickslow had chosen and the light grey patterned quilt cover Lucy had picked. She'd taken every other sheet in their house and moved them all out to the living area.

With the help of Virgo and Loke, she'd tipped the lounges on their backs and tied the corners of the sheets to the short legs, while the others had been anchored to the top of the fireplace and then the shelves on either side just a little bit higher. On the other ends, they'd been tied to the remaining lounge, while the opposite end of the sheets had been pinned to the ground by the armchair and the coffee table Lucy had moved out of the way to make room for the overly large mattress.

There was a line of small paper lanterns attached to a piece of string that was running across the ceiling and dipped down right above the mattress on the ground, with the sheets essentially coming to rest on top of it, creating a tent-like shape, while the string was tied to the curtain rod by the windows on one end, and a nail where a painting was usually hanging on the wall by the door. The only light in the entire room was coming from those same lanterns that were hanging above the mattress, leaving the area in a dim orange glow from the colour of the lanterns and the off-white sheets, inter-mixed with the spare purple ones.

"I can see that," Bickslow chuckled. "But why?"

"Because I felt like it."

"That seems like a plausible reason," he said. Then, when he tried to climb in over the lounge and through the join in the sheets where Lucy's head was peeking through, he raised an eyebrow. She'd tightened her grip on the sheets and she wasn't letting him in. "Oh? Am I not allowed in?"

"Not yet."

"Not yet?" he echoed.

Lucy nodded, giggling slightly from the pout on Bickslow's face. "You can come in once you've had a shower. And changed into pyjamas. And then had dinner, which is in the fridge. You just need to reheat it. Once you've done all of that, you can enter the sheet fort."

Sighing, Bickslow turned and headed across the room to the kitchen, flicking the light switch on the wall as he went past it. "There's rules to enter this sheet fort of yours? Really?"

"My fort, my rules."

"Of course."

Another grin from the blonde as she kept her head peeking out through the sheets. "If it makes you feel any better," she said, Bickslow's gaze flicking up as he pulled a fork from the drawer in front of him. "The babies can't come in either until you can."

Bickslow shrugged, shovelling a forkful of the food into his mouth. "It does," he mumbled, swallowing before he continued, "But I don't think it will make them feel any better. Ain't that right, babies?"

"Right! Right!" they chanted.

So as Bickslow went about his list of things to do before he was allowed to enter the sacred sheet fort, Lucy retreated back into the sheet fort in question. She'd lined the lounges with every pillow in the house she could find (which was a lot, surprisingly), so they essentially surrounded the mattress. And boy, the mattress was big. Once they got it on the bedframe and into the bedroom, Lucy was definitely going to have a long way to go in her sleep to push Bickslow out of it.

But hey, there was nothing she could do about her subconscious mind wanting to curl up against her husband in her sleep.

And a little while later, Lucy looked towards the gap in the sheets where she'd stuck her head through before when she saw the lights in the room go off, obviously signalling that Bickslow was done.

The babies were first to zoom through the sheets and as they did so, they caused the string supporting it all to move slightly, making the entire thing bounce for a second before it evened out. "Hey, babies," she cooed, opening her arms up to them as they nestled in against her as they usually did.

"Lucy! Lucy!"

Next was Bickslow, albeit a little slower and a little more carefully as he looked around with his usual wide grin before crawling across the mattress and crashing down next to Lucy. "Nice," he mumbled, his arm reaching out to wrap around her side as he pulled her closer to him and leant forward to press his lips to hers in a slow and deep kiss. "Hi, by the way," he said as they pulled apart.

"Hello," she giggled.

Bickslow briefly looked down to see the babies all nestled in the small space between them on the mattress – more on Lucy's side, of course – and he grinned as he looked back up. "How was your week?"

She hummed in thought for a short moment and she shifted on the mattress, pushing herself closer to Bickslow, close enough so that her belly was just touching his own stomach. "Not bad," she said quietly. "Pretty slow, actually. What about yours?"

"Oh, you know…boring. Got shocked by Laxus a few times. The babies went overboard. The usual, really."

Lucy giggled. "Sounds fun."

"Very," he agreed before leaning in for another quick kiss. "I haven't said I love you yet."

"I forgive you, since you just said it then."

"And I'm gonna say it again. I love you," he gently rolled her onto her back as the babies flew out of the way to apparently go and occupy a small portion of the free space on the mattress. Then, as he kissed her cheek again with a smirk, he murmured, "I love you."

"I love you too, Bicks," she said, giggling quietly as he continued to mumble it over and over, seemingly making up for the days he'd missed. Lucy had to admit it was pretty damn amusing when Bickslow turned into the complete hopeless romantic he was then. Considering it was Bickslow of all people, really. But she loved it. She loved that dorky side of him because it was adorable.

He was her romantic dork. Forever and always.

Bickslow moved down over her until he was above her belly and he pushed her singlet up just enough so he could kiss the highest part of her bump – that by that point, you could tell she was definitely pregnant. "And I love you too, even though you're like the size of a grape or something," he said, his hands on her hips.

"Avocado."

He lifted his gaze to meet Lucy's. "Really?" he asked, and she nodded before he looked back down to press another kiss to her belly. "Well, I love you, avocado baby." Then, as he moved back up to hover over her as her arms slunk around his neck, he murmured, "But I love you the most."

But of course, his romantic endeavors were once again ruined by the babies, apparently getting jealous, as they all flew into the side of his head and made him sit up slightly, leaving him scowling at the floating dolls with Lucy laughing beneath him.

With a sigh, he looked back down to Lucy as the babies calmed down, returning to their beds just in front of the fireplace on the mattress. "Okay, so maybe I love you sixth most?" But really, he loved Lucy the most. Lucy, then baby (though the baby was like, just below Lucy), then the other babies. But of course, he couldn't say that out loud. The babies didn't like it when he did that.

"So I'm above our baby?" she asked, her brows arched as she awaited his answer.

"Uh…well…" he mumbled, rolling onto his side next to her and keeping his arm around her. "I love you both equally?" he said carefully, his voice rising in pitch at the end. Hell, he wasn't sure if that was the right answer or not. It was pretty close to being equal, he knew that much.

"Nice answer," she giggled.

"Thank you," he chuckled, letting the tip of his nose brush against her cheek as he rested his face on the mattress next to hers. "What about me? What am I ranked?"

She hummed in thought as she worked through it in her head, her lips pulling up into a small smirk before she answered. "I love you the… twenty-second most."

"Twenty-second most?! I mean, I wasn't expecting first, but…come on…how?"

"Well, there's the baby, then my spirits, then your babies, making you the twenty-second."

He arched a brow. "You mean you love my babies more than you love me?"

"To be fair, I think your babies love _me_ more than they love you," she turned her head to look to the five dolls lined up on the other side of her. "Ain't that right, babies?" she asked, using the phrase that Bickslow most often used when asking them anything just for good measure.

"Love Lucy! More! Love Lucy!" they chanted in response as Bickslow sighed into the mattress.

Lucy giggled again as she turned back, pressing a light kiss to his cheek. "Don't worry, Bicks," she whispered. "Between you and me, you're on par with the avocado."

"That's more like it," he grinned, instantly rolling back over her with his arms on either side of her shoulders. "Now, how about we break in this new mattress of ours?"

* * *

 **You guys know how I do things; you know that I'll have any errors that I missed fixed in the next day or so.**

 **With that, I hope you enjoyed it, and please remember to review if you did! I'd love to see what you thought of it or what you want to see in future additions to this universe. You know, if you want to, and all.**

 **\- April**


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